Yesterday, as is my usual custom when I am driving somewhere, the FM radio dial was set at its usual point, at 89.7 which around these parts, Sarasota, FL, is the Public media station WUSF, I happened to tune in during the broadcast of the Fresh Air show on NPR when the host Terry Gross was interviewing Jill Lepore, a Harvard University professor and a regular contributor to the New Yorker magazine. Jill is the author of The Secret History of Wonder Woman.
Now Wonder Woman, the heroine of the most popular, and most widely read comic featuring a woman was the creation of author William Moulton Marsden more than 70 tears ago. He wrote his first Wonder Woman in 1941. Marsden had quite a story himself.
Marsden had a wife, Sadie Holloway, and a mistress, Olive Byrne who was the niece of Margaret Sanger, who was famous in her own right as the founder of Planned Parenthood as well as a crusader for birth control. He, and the wife and the mistress all lived together discreetly, and Marsden fathered children with both of them. They lived in Rye, New York. The best part of this is that Marsden, who lived this life of lies and secrets, was also the creator of the lie detector.
Now this post is not going to be about Marsden, who had a strong interest in both Suffragists and super heroes, as well as pinups and centerfolds. Nor will it be about comic books, Wonder Woman, or anything directly related. But the radio show that I heard yesterday was actually the trigger to get me started on this post – which I had been circling around, and unable to find an entry point that I liked, for more than a few days.
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